Rants from the Land of the Rising Sun!!!

Analysis

Users/Audience:

 The primary users of the final project will be sixth grade students  located in Iwakuni, Japan.  They are ages 11-12 with English as their primary language although numerous students are bilingual.  The makeup of the class has yet to be finalized but will include special needs students including a student with severe autism.  Likewise the class will include at least twp students that are designated ESL but currently operate at level iv categorization. 

Environment: 

The environment is a Department of defense school located in the Pacific theater.  The schools holds roughly 500 students and is blessed with a plethora of available educational technology including access to computer labs, mobile labs, printers, scanners, cameras and smart boards.  The environment is conducive to technology integration into the curriculum as part of DODEA’s ongoing CSP goals framework. 

What should they do?: 

The goal for use of the final project  is to have students begin to examine the larger driving questions behind the study of ancient civilizations.  The students will be able to interact via blogs and a wiki to examine the larger components that drive the creation of large ancient civilization such as Egypt, China, Mesopotamia and Greece.  The students will identify what common factors exists between the civilizations and their formation. 

Similar projects available:

The idea actually came to me after reviewing some of the ideas posted for the AP history classes by some COMET students.  I liked the idea of finding the larger scale themes behind AP world history and so I thought the idea could be simplified and instituted among a young student body base.  Those websites created by the COMET std7uenst could be something to review for further help and ideas.    

Performance drivers:

I think at this age group a common driver performance that may impede success will be motivation and incentive.  The students need to be motivated to learn although we all dream of intrinsic motivation in every student.  This, unfortunately, is not always the case.  Yet, the more I think about it, the fact that we will be utilizing technology they are familiar with and excited about will definitely help spur motivation.  The idea behind creating the site is to get students familiar with concepts they may already use and to institute in a manner that will aid their learning.  The incentive is to use technology and to create their own sites similar to those they already see on the web.